Five hours drive north of Adelaide, the Flinders Ranges are an area of stunning natural beauty, featuring rugged gorges, abundant wildlife and many important Aboriginal sites. They are also the gateway to Australia’s red heart – the vast Outback with its deserts, salt lakes and a sky without limits. This is where the soils turn red, the waters end and adventure begins. Here you can fly over the narrow gorges and soaring peaks of Wilpena Pound, fossick for opals in the quirky township of Coober Pedy, or sample gourmet Outback cuisine as you camp under the stars, or stay in luxury eco-accommodation.

Highlights include:

Wilpena Pound

The focal point of the Flinders Ranges National Park is an amphitheatre of mammoth proportions. Shaped like a giant cupped hand, it’s ringed by saw-tooth peaks which are visible from space. The Pound offers some amazing bushwalking, thrilling scenic flights and awesome four wheel drive safaris into sacred and hidden gorges. 

Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary

Arkaroola's awesome four wheel drive Ridgetop Tour is justifiably world-famous. And, like everywhere in the South Australian Outback, the night skies above Arkaroola blaze with stars and planets, with a great highlight of any stay here being to explore them through the largest privately owned telescope in Australia.  

Port Augusta

This is an ideal base for exploring the nearby Flinders Ranges. Visit the Royal Flying Doctor Service and the School of the Air, which teaches school-age children throughout northern South Australia. Wadlata Outback Centre also gives a unique and entertaining insight into the Outback including Aboriginal Dreaming, European settlement, geology and mining.  

Aboriginal Dreaming

Take a guided tour of the Flinders Ranges with your own Aboriginal guide. Their Dreamtime stories and interpretations of the Australian landscape make the experience of travelling through the amazing Outback landscape both uniquely educational and memorable. 

Coober Pedy

The quirky township of Coober Pedy produces 80% of the world's opal and is surrounded by hundreds of open mine shafts, resulting in a fascinating lunar landscape. Much of the town's accommodation, like many of its homes, business and churches, is built underground to avoid the extreme desert climate. Town tours visit underground dwellings and opal fields, along with the nearby Breakaways Reserve and Painted Desert, where spectacular cliffs and rock formations glow at dusk.  

Outback Mail Run

Be a ‘postie’ for the day on the Coober Pedy Outback Mail Run, which delivers mail to Oodnadatta, William Creek and remote cattle stations. En route you’ll meet real Outback characters as you travel across some amazingly diverse countryside, including gibber plains, red sand hills and inland seabeds dating back 120 million years.  

Outback Pubs

Stopping for a cold beer and a chat with the locals in an Outback pub is mandatory. Most serve more than beer, with many offering accommodation, good meals and hospitality. A highlight is the Prairie Hotel in Parachilna, recently voted one of the world’s hippest hotels, and famous for its quirky bush cuisine.  

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